At the centre of the genre of dating advertisements is a tension between speech and writing, process and product, interaction and transaction. In this article I investigate some of the interpersonal resources available to writers of advertisements to achieve the goal of interacting in writing with a potential partner. I first consider the ways in which advertisers use questions and answers to enact and project speech-like interactional roles for themselves and their readers, in order to encourage an overt response to their textual initiations and open a conversation with a suitable partner. I then consider their use of modality to engage potential partners and negotiate mutual suitability. I conclude by comparing the generic function of these two areas of interpersonal resource and suggest a relationship of agnation between them.
Berry, M. (1980) Layers of Exchange Structure. Discourse Analysis Monograph No 7. Birmingham : English Language Research.
2.
Berry, M. (1981a) `Systemic Linguistics and Discourse Analysis: A Multi-layered Approach to Exchange Structure', in R.M. Coulthard and M. Montgomery (eds) Studies in Discourse Analysis, pp. 120— 45. London : Routledge.
3.
Berry, M. (1981b) `Towards Layers of Exchange Structure for Directive Exchanges', Network2: 23—32.
4.
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
Butler, C.S. (1988) `Politeness and the Semantics of Modalised Directives in English', in J.D. Benson, M.J. Cummings and W.S. Greaves (eds) Linguistics in a Systemic Perspective, pp. 119—54. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
6.
Coupland, J. (1996) `Dating Advertisements: Discourses of the Commodified Self', Discourse & Society7(2): 187—207.
7.
Frank, J. (1989) `On Conversational Involvement by Mail: The Use of Questions in Direct Sales Letters', Text9(2): 231—59.
8.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1985) Spoken and Written LanguageGeelong, Vic: Deakin University Press (republished by Oxford University Press, 1989).
9.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edn. London: Edward Arnold.
10.
Labov, W. (1972) `Rules for Ritual Insults', in D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction , pp. 120—69. New York: Free Press .
11.
Lemke, J.L. (1992) `Interpersonal Meaning in Discourse: Value Orientations' , in M. Davies and L. Ravelli (eds) Advances in Systemic Linguistics: Recent Theory and Practice, pp. 82—104. London: Pinter.
12.
Levinson, S. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13.
Marley, C.N. (2000a) `Trading Talk? Interaction in Written Dating Advertisements ', in R.M. Coulthard, J. Cotterill and F. Rock (eds) Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, pp. 293—305. Tübingen: NiemeyerVerlag.
14.
Marley, C.N. (2000b) `Beyond the Usual: The Modification of Gender in a British Dating Ads Column', Text20(3): 271—306.
15.
Martin, J.R. (1992) English Text: System and Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
16.
Martin, J.R. (2000) `Beyond Exchange: APPRAISAL Systems in English' , in S. Hunston and G. Thompson (eds) Evaluation in Text, pp. 143—75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17.
Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (1995) Lexicogrammatical Cartography: English Systems . Tokyo: International Language Sciences Publishers.
18.
McCarthy, M. (1993) `Spoken Discourse Markers in Written Text', in J.M. Sinclair, M.P. Hoey and G. Fox (eds) Techniques of Description, pp. 170—82. London: Routledge.
19.
Nair, B.R. (1992) `Gender, Genre and Generative Grammar: Deconstructing the Matrimonial Column', in M. Toolan (ed.) Language, Text and Context, pp. 227—54. London : Routledge.
20.
Penman, R. (1990) `Facework and Politeness: Multiple Goals in Courtroom Discourse', in K. Tracy and N. Coupland (eds) Multiple Goals in Discourse , pp. 15—38. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
21.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. (1974) `A Simplest Systematics for the Organisation of Turn-Taking for Conversation', Language50(4): 696—735.
22.
Shalom, C. (1997) `That Great Supermarket of Desire: Attributes of the Desired Other in Personal Advertisements', in K. Harvey and C. Shalom (eds) Language and Desire, pp. 186—203. London: Routledge.
23.
Thompson, G. (1996) Introducing Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.
24.
Thompson, G. and Thetela, P. (1995) `The Sound of One Hand Clapping: The Management of Interaction in Written Discourse', Text15(1): 103—27.
25.
Thorne, A. and Coupland, J. (1998) `Articulations of Same-Sex Desire: Lesbian and Gay Male Dating Advertisements', Journal of Sociolinguistics2(2): 233—57.
